Re-Entry, Really? But I Am Still in YWAM!

Re-Entry when it comes to Christian Missions is defined as:

Re-Entry – The process of transitioning from short-term or long-term missions to life at home.

Part of the last week of the YWAM Discipleship Training School is usually spent talking about re-entry. It can be quite a shock for people coming home to their friends, family, church, job and / or school. Even after only spending 6-months away on the YWAM DTS so much can happen, and so many things experienced, that coming back to where you left from can be a big challenge.

Because we were never actually leaving YWAM we did not prepare ourselves for “re-entry”.

I guess that we should have known better if we had really looked at our situation. We were leaving a close knit YWAM community that we had grown with for the last 11-years. Everyday I was in the office working with missions minded people, passionate to do everything they could to further the spread of God’s Word and Truth. A few times a week we were at the YWAM Centre for a meal or event, and half of our friends were also part of YWAM in Townsville.

Coming here we were in a way coming “home” for me, even though I had been gone for the last eleven years. I didn’t really think of it as “coming home”, it felt more like “leaving home”, but Calgary is where a lot of my old friends are, my family is all here and my home church is here in Calgary as well. I think that the best way to describe it would be that I was coming back to where I grew up, rather than coming “home”.

Experiencing Re-Entry

We have found ourselves experiencing our own sort of re-entry as we have come here to Calgary.

Here are some points that I have taken from this article about re-entry:

Stages of Re-Entry:

1. Initial Euphoria
2. Irritability and Hostility
3. Gradual Adjustment
4. Adaptation

This article also has some really good points about re-entry:

1. You have changed – I’ve been gone for 11 years. When I left I was 21, very new in my Christian faith, single with no responsibilities and no clear direction for my life. Now I’m 32, been involved in full-time ministry for over a decade, married with two kids and I feel that I have a relatively clear calling and direction on my life.
2. Your friends and family have changed – Friends have moved, married, had kids, gotten jobs, made new friends and changed, a lot. Family has been through similar changes, even though at the moment both of my sisters are living at home with my parent’s, which still the same as when I left.
3. Your church has changed – Most of the people of my age that were at our home church here in Calgary have moved to other churches in the years that we have been gone. There are new people, and a few old friends, but the face of the church has changed dramatically in the past eleven years. The church also went through a change in the senior pastor and youth pastor who originally sent me out to YWAM, which would obviously bring about quite a few changes.
4. Your culture has changed – I am amazed at how much Calgary has changed since I left. The population since I left in 1998 has increased by about 20% to over 1 million people. The roads are busier, people a lot more rushed and a lot less polite. Even Tamara has noticed how much more rude people have gotten here since her first visit after we were married in 2001. Calgary has a much more cosmopolitan feel to it (cosmopolitan being defined as being made up of diverse peoples, showing cultural diversity and being more international in scope).

Because we were changing YWAM locations we didn’t expect to experience everything associated with re-entry (as well as culture shock, but I will write about that in another article). Part of why we feel we are experiencing it is because of the substantial difference between the YWAM community that we left in Australia and the YWAM community here in Calgary.

Another thing is that most of our friends in Australia were also involved in missions, but here in Calgary most of our friends are involved in main stream jobs. This brings with it a different way of looking at things, and it’s taking a lot for Tamara and I get to used to it. Just the other day I was sitting around a table with some guys as they were talking about finances and their jobs where they were earning two to three times what I do. I found it a bit of a challenge to know how to engage in that conversation. (Nothing wrong with a main stream job at all if that’s where God’s got you. He has a different plan for everyone of us, we just need to figure out what it is.)

I guess that it would have been nice to have been somehow equipped better for what we were walking into, but who knew eh?

Right now we are just struggling through it, hoping that the light we see in this tunnel is the end of the tunnel, and not the oncoming train …